GP&H 1895, Arc & Incandescent Streetlights Across Canada

A jelly factory, the best volunteer fire brigade in Canada, and granolithic pavements & macadamized roads. 

... The Canadian town and city booster booklets from circa 1900 which are preserved at archive.org are really valuable for understanding how these places saw themselves less than a century after most of them were settled. Curious about exactly why the name 'Hespeler' was chosen? Here's the answer!

Jim Christie sent me some wonderful links on the local interurban railway at Hespeler and my interest has fallen into the rabbit hole of early electrification in Canada.

As the very long and celebrated reign of Queen Victoria wound down, the magic of rural electrification, was following the metropolitan corridor created by railway technology, farther and farther into the Canadian countryside.

In Ontario, it would soon be The People's Power, produced by the provincially-owned utility with white coal (falling water), which would revolutionize farm work, lighten housework, provide suburban transportation, and improve safety at night.

Considering everything expected from our modern electricity grids now and in the future, it is interesting to imagine life back when fire, flowing water and external combustion engines powered modern civilization. That's what these old accounts provide.

Abundant water power would eventually fuel ambitious plans to build wide-ranging electric interurban railway networks in Ontario. However, Galt, Preston and Hespeler's system would be powered by a classic purpose-built stationary steam engine power house.

Hespeler, Canada, A Souvenir of the Factory Town 1901 (archive.org)

Hespeler Machinery Co catalogue 1909 (archive.org)

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Two articles about the Galt & Preston (& Hespeler)

from:

The Galt & Preston Street Railway was one of the earliest interurbans in Canada and was a little unusual in that it also moved carload freight, as well as passengers and express. Founded in 1890, it was built north from the Grand Trunk Railway station at Galt. The power house was located 4.75 miles away at Preston and operations began between those two points on July 26, 1894. 

The Ottawa Car Company built two cars for the railway - numbered 22 and 23. The latter is pictured below the map and the first article. The railway also converted three used streetcars from Brooklyn, New York to serve as trailers. 

The terms of its provincial franchise stated that it would meet all CPR trains at Galt and carry passengers from there who were bound for Preston.

In January 1896, the line was extended to Hespeler, giving it a total length of 9 miles. 

Carload freight was moved by a small steam locomotive at night. This enabled the power house to be shut down overnight. 

The Canadian Pacific Railway began its corporate takeover of the line in 1903.

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Here is a segment of a 1916 government topographical map of the area described:

from: Historical Topographic Map Digitization Project https://ocul.on.ca/topomaps/collection/

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Here is an article on this charming, unspoiled little interurban from March 1895:

If anyone reading the article is looking for the diagram, here it is:

from: Traction on the Grand; John Mills; 1977; Railfare.

Car 23 was configured as a combine and you can see its short baggage/express section at the left.

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Here is another article on the Galt Preston & Hespeler from September 1895:

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Electric Streetlights

Another article from this journal discusses the duties added to the urban gas light inspection authority - keeping track of municipal electrical streetlights and the accuracy of their electrical meters. A long list of Canadian towns and cities (in no apparent order) and their electric streetlight statistics follows.

Unlike gas lights powered by locally-generated town gas (methane and other volatiles cooked off coal and stored in accumulator tanks), electric streetlights did not require individual daily lighting and extinguishing by a lamp lighter. In addition, wire conductors strung to the electric lights were simpler than the laying and maintaining of the pipes carrying gas to each fixture. And the municipality could chose between the more primitive and powerful arc lights ... and incandescent bulbs which came in different wattages.